Last week, Nathan Calvin, vice president and general counsel of the advocacy group Encode, forwarded me a screenshot of an email he had received. The sender, a reporter named Michael Chen, was seeking comment for a story about an AI bill in Tennessee for a publication called The Wire by Acutus . The email Encode received from “Michael Chen.” Something was off about the email. The full title of the article was shared in advance, the framing was highly loaded, and the only format offered was “written Q&A.” Web and social media searches turned up no one by the name “Michael Chen” publicly associated with Acutus. Chen was also writing from a generic address ([email protected]), which would be an odd convention for a reporter at a publication that touts many contributors and has a near-daily publication rate.…